APPEL: Let’s Talk About The Media And Louisiana Civics For A While…

Of course no-one in media asks why Gov. John Bel Edwards and his administration has all but disappeared after the opening of the current Special Session of the Louisiana legislature. Perhaps the media needs to take a refresher Civics class before being allowed to opine on the state of our state.

The government structure of Louisiana, like the United States, is a democratically elected republic. That is, the people delegate their authority to legislate to 144 people elected by them. Senate districts are larger and much more ethnically and politically diverse than House districts. House districts are much smaller and usually less diverse in their population. Ironically the liberal demand for minority districts has broken down the diversity of population within many districts and has resulted in a legislature that is much more monolithic in ideology than had always been the case.

The legislature is a separate branch of government purposefully designed to be more responsive to the people than the executive branch. To quote our current Governor John Bel Edwards while he was in the House –

“It’s a basic question, is this institution going to stand up for a separate, independent, equal branch of government or not?”

And so now that has happened. The legislature has asserted its proper role as the voice of the people and the howls of outrage from the liberal media can be heard from the edge of the Gulf all the way to the Arkansas border.

Why would that be? First and most obviously is that the governor is the darling of the liberal media and a failure of the legislature to fall into line with his agenda is not to be tolerated. Beyond that and equally offensive to the media is that the people of Louisiana reject the big government, welfare state model that is gospel to the liberal press.

How dare the people reject and the legislature fail to pass a new tax structure that supports the growing government model? How dare the people reject and the legislature fail to pass a gas tax that would just pour hundreds of millions into a government agency (that being the Department of Transportation and Development) that has failed to deliver on decades of promises? How dare the people demand that all citizens pay a fair share of taxes and that we finally begin to reject 80 years of taxing “the man behind the tree?”

I believe that the outrage of the liberal media, exhibited through their opinion pages, is demonstrative of the “neutrality” of their reporting.

Message to the media on basic civics; not since the time of the ancient Grecian democracy has any system of government place the elected in as near alignment with the electorate. If you want to find fault with your outrage that the people reject a liberal philosophy, perhaps you should question the lack of a vision that would serve to guide a representative body to a new place and to support of leadership.

And how would a vision move such a legislative body? Basic civics again, if the people buy into a vision of a better place, then the legislature will respond. No vision, no movement!

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